


What He Left Behind

by Smiley5494



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Tragedy, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Heavy Angst, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Drowning, Implied/Referenced Suicide, MCD is not a canonical character death, Please stay safe, Post-Canon, Suicidal Thoughts, This is very dark, and im the person that wrote graphic second person pov drowning without blinking an eye, dont say i didnt warn u, i cried writing this so thats what im measuring it off, no happy ending, pain and tears are in store, please do not read if any of this would cause you harm, this has no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:54:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28498626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smiley5494/pseuds/Smiley5494
Summary: The concept of time stretched, an hour felt more like a minute, a month like a day. He slept for longer, stayed awake for longer, and the decades blurred into obscurity.When one had been alive for centuries, the lives of mortals were barely a blink of an eye.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17





	What He Left Behind

**Author's Note:**

> Happy new year!
> 
> Have this really sad story about Merlin's identity after canon and Arthur's death :D
> 
> ~~Ish if u read this, I know i said it would explore the co-dependency those two had in canon and how Merlin reacts to Arthur's death while also being immortal, but instead i fell down this rabbit hole and this is what happened :)~~

Arthur was dead and Merlin was—

They’d spent a decade being as thick as thieves, always by each other's side, never apart, and now Arthur was dead and Merlin was—

Merlin would never see him again, not now, not in a decade, a lifetime, a hundred lifetimes. Arthur was dead, and Merlin was—

Arthur was dead and Merlin was immortal. Nothing he could do would let him join Arthur.

He’d tried, goodness only knows that he’d tried. Freya had tossed him back on the shore when he tried that way. The serkets stung him and the poison coursed through his veins. It had burned—excruciating and agonising—but he woke on the forest floor with only a scar to show, just as alive as he was before.

He refused all positions in court that Gwen offered, she had been his first friend in Camelot, he would always treasure her, but he couldn’t deal with the looks and attention that came with power. He didn’t want the attention, and he didn’t want to be promoted by anyone except for Arthur.

Instead, he took up painting. He painted each of his friends, both from memory and also from having them sit for him. He got good, fast, and he knew that one day his paintings would be all that was left of his friends. It would be just him and the portraits of those he had loved and lost.

Merlin would outlive everyone he’d ever known, and all those he would know.

_It would take a few centuries for him to stop visiting the lake of Avalon each year, but it took just under a lifetime for Merlin to stop looking to his side for Arthur. He still felt his loss keenly—they’d been by each other's side consistently for a decade—but it no longer felt like the most important thing in the world. He stopped searching for the echos of the dead and started searching for the echos of the living._

He coexisted easily with the lives of mortals until Gaius’ death. It came easily, and quickly, a peaceful passing. Merlin woke one morning in winter and knew that someone else he loved was dead. He could feel the loss before he even knew who it was—then, only then, it became worse. Gaius was old, Gaius was frail, but Gaius was still the closest thing he had to a father and his loss nearly broke Merlin. He gave the old physician the proper send off to Avalon and resigned himself to outliving all his friends.

Percival died the next year.

* * *

The concept of time stretched, an hour felt more like a minute, a month like a day. He slept for longer, stayed awake for longer, and the decades blurred into obscurity.

When one had been alive for centuries, the lives of mortals were barely a blink of an eye. Merlin loved and lost thousands of friends, and still, he couldn’t stay away. No one was left from his time in Camelot, not even Kilgharrah or Aithusa, and all the objects that remained had been stored away in either his childhood home or the castle, preserved by magic.

Merlin’s paintings had gotten better—to the point where they were photorealistic, and every few decades he repainted those he’d loved. Gwen, Arthur, Lancelot, Gwaine, Leon, Percival, Elyan, Gaius, his parents, even Morgana and Mordred got a portrait. He hung them on the walls and when he was feeling particularly mournful he stared at them and tried to recall the details of their lives and identities.

Merlin knew, without a doubt, that if he hadn’t taken up painting, he’d have long since forgotten their faces—maybe even their names. He could barely remember the taunts he and Arthur had thrown at each other, let alone what Arthur liked to eat, or what he sounded like.

Merlin couldn’t remember why he’d ever cared that Mordred lived. If Merlin were to be faced with the same choices now, as opposed to then, he’d have killed Mordred without remorse. He didn’t like those thoughts, they made him think of corruption and destruction, and made his heart pound in his ears. It felt almost fitting, that his thoughts turned darker and his life was spent in the remotest of locations—when he wasn’t interacting with society.

 _Society_.

It was such a foreign concept to Merlin. The idea that people could live and die, and build something of themselves in the minuscule amount of time they were given. Death was inevitable and it did not postpone, no matter how much mortals begged. It only avoided Merlin, and it didn’t matter how much he begged.

Empires rose and fell and still, Merlin lived, watching from the sidelines. Occasionally he played a game with the lives of men, sending a few people in one direction, delaying a few others. It was a fun game, one that only barely affected him. What did it matter that a few queens were assassinated? What did it matter that someone decided to dedicate their life and the life of their descendants to killing Merlin?

He switched names with every identity, cycling through them and tossing them out when he was done. Names like Myrddin Wylt or Ambrosius Aurelianus featured, and none were reoccurring. He didn’t stick with one for more than a lifetime, preferring to stay mostly anonymous, and give the names of those he had met previously.

He spent a few years at the bottom of a well, he spent a few more sleeping in a castle somewhere in the middle of nowhere. He racked up experience in nearly every career he could get a position in and built skill after skill into his repertoire. He toured the world, always moving, and he rarely settled in one place for long.

What counted as ‘long’ was subjective anyway.

He fought and killed in wars that had nothing to do with anyone except the rich funding it, and laughed in the face of those with a sword to his chest or a gun to his head. More than once he’d simply told them to go ahead and maybe it would stick that time.

It never did.

He played a dangerous game of fate and destiny, walking a fine line between death and destruction. His language died out and with it went the beliefs and culture he’d once belonged to. He was the lone survivor of Albion and his memories and knowledge were all that was left.

He was human—or at least his mind and body believed he was human—and he forgot things just as any human did. It would’ve taken a miracle to remember the things he’d once sworn to never forget, and the knowledge that he had long since forgotten important details kept him up at night and tore his thoughts apart.

He’d spent so long alive he forgot why.

A human being was not designed to live forever, and Merlin’s consciousness survived each time his body did not. The pain that came from his internal organs collapsing was nearly on par with the pain from the serket stings; his body revived itself every time it killed him, and he found that the pain never truly left, even when the body was new.

* * *

It was a cold morning—no clouds in sight, the kind of grey-blue chill that you could feel in your chest before you even leave the house—when Merlin realised he’d forgotten the people in his paintings.

He stood in front of them, after nearly a century away, and felt nothing—no grief, no heartbreak, just emptiness. He didn’t recognise the faces, he only recognised the names through the stories, legends and myths.

His gaze flitted from one portrait to another, and he found he couldn’t remember which one was which without looking at the name-tags.

_King Arthur Pendragon, Queen Guinevere, Sir Lancelot, Sir Gwaine, Sir Leon, Sir Percival, Sir Elyan, Gaius, Geoffrey of Monmouth._

He couldn’t remember seeing them alive. Now, after so long, they were just coloured paint on a canvas in the shape of a legend.

* * *

Merlin reintegrated himself into the public, slowly and carefully, but with all he could. He wanted a distraction, and working several jobs seemed to do the trick.

He didn’t use his own name, preferring to take on a fake one and forged all the necessary documents to make _Hayden Kay_ a fully-fledged citizen. The name didn’t fit, but then again, he’d gone by other names for so long even his own didn’t feel right.

Hayden made friends, went out for drinks and danced with his coworkers at annual holiday celebrations. Merlin threw his entire self into becoming Hayden until the line between the identities was blurred and no longer as clear as it had once been.

 _Hayden_ had a favourite colour, and opinions on music, but _Merlin_ was largely indifferent. _Hayden_ was a cat person— ~~he wasn’t reminded of dragons every time he saw a cat, _he wasn’t_~~ —but _Merlin_ had always been fond of dogs.

He moved through life as Hayden, never ageing, and it was only about twenty years after he’d become the small nobody—that was the office-worker, Hayden Kay—that his body tried to destroy itself again.

Hayden’s friends mourned for a friend taken too soon, and Merlin wished with all his heart that he could have truly died. He would have faded into obscurity, but fate had other plans and he lived on—albeit in a newly revived body; getting out of a casket buried in a grave was dishearteningly easy with magic.

* * *

It was two and a half millennium after he had been born—after he’d died for the first time—that magic died.

He was surprised it had taken that long—people changed so often, they lost faith in the magic of the world. The last little bits of magic choked and sputtered out when the final temples collapsed, long forgotten.

He felt it, felt his connection to the natural world evaporate. He clutched at his chest, choking on the sudden lack of air, of life. It felt like he was suddenly blinded—seeing only half the picture. It felt like he was disconnected, deaf, dumb, and blind as he moved through his day. He didn’t know what was happening to him, he couldn’t remember anything like it; his memory had failed him, he no longer remembered each of the identities he had created, let alone his native language or his real name.

He couldn’t access his magic—no flames could be called forth, and the natural power no longer bent to his will. He found himself missing it, and yet somewhere deep down inside made him feel like he was missing something important—that this couldn’t happen without something else happening. There was something—someone—he was forgetting.

It didn’t matter, if he couldn’t remember it then it must not have been all too important.

* * *

When his body decided enough was enough again, he knew, without a doubt, that this was the final death. There would be no waking up from this one, no new body to inhabit until it tried to destroy itself. This was the end, full stop, and nothing he could do would change that.

It was a slow death, a painful one, worse than any other he could remember, which wasn’t all too much, his memory had been the first to go. Each individual organ collapsed on him, his kidneys, his lungs, his _heart_ —

He lay in a hospital bed, surrounded by strangers and nearly-strangers and thought it was fitting that he would die as he lived—forgotten, fading away into obscurity. Whatever name he had been born into, whatever name he inhabited now, mean nothing in the grand scheme of things.

He had spent so long fighting against everything in his way that when he stopped it felt like a relief.

His eyes closed and he couldn’t hear the machines frantically beeping their final warnings. His breath stuttered to a standstill and his consciousness faded into nothing.

He died for a final time, and this time he would not be waking.

Nature mourned the passing of Merlin Emrys, mourned the failed destiny that his death symbolised. Arthur never returned, and Magic had died, and with it went the hope of a golden age.

* * *

Death was inevitable and no one was exempt—not even an immortal.


End file.
